Laaltain

Cynicism and the politics in Pakistan

10 مارچ، 2016

Among oth­er things, polit­i­cal cyn­i­cism destroys what­ev­er lit­tle chance may exist for dia­logue in a dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion. This I learned from our own com­pa­ny of friends. Frankly, that learn­ing came at the cost of that company’s dis­so­lu­tion.

Among oth­er things, polit­i­cal cyn­i­cism destroys what­ev­er lit­tle chance may exist for dia­logue in a dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion.

Actu­al­ly we were three to five friends who used to gath­er in a restau­rant for chat­ting after a week or so, reg­u­lar­ly. One friend was too adamant to sus­tain a dia­logue. It was real­ly next to impos­si­ble to con­verse with him. You say one thing and he will trash it with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion. No doubt, he was fond of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and thus for him it was so eas­i­er to reject our views with­out hav­ing any recourse to rea­son. His man­ner of reject­ing our views was so scorn­ful that one could only bear it by blow­ing it in a laugh.

Most of the times, he would put him­self in a high posi­tion and judge upon us. He would ascribe all the neg­a­tiv­i­ty and all the faults hap­pen­ing any­where in the world to us. Sur­pris­ing­ly, he had lost all the sense of humor also. When some­one relat­ed a joke, instead of enjoy­ing it he would retort with a neg­a­tive opin­ion of any of the issues that the joke made fun of. He would make us express our opin­ions about the mat­ters which did not inter­est us, and in case we declined, he would cen­sure us for not being con­sis­tent.

At times, he would try to test our knowl­edge. In case, we admit our defi­cien­cy, he would denounce us for not being knowl­edge­able. If we tried to avoid his ques­tion, he would dub us as illit­er­ates. Some­times he would put a ques­tion to us, if we treat­ed it light­ly, he would frown at us; and after a lot of teas­ing, tell the answer but to belit­tle us.

cyn­ics gen­er­al­ly exhib­it two char­ac­ter­is­tics: first, they are neg­a­tive; and sec­ond, they are fault­find­ing.

Despite such trou­bles, our gath­er­ings con­tin­ued. We tried to set­tle our­selves with this type of man­ner­ism of his. Now and then, a seri­ous quar­rel would break out, and it would appear the things were mov­ing to their log­i­cal end. I remem­ber that last meet­ing of ours. We were dis­cussing that ulti­mate­ly it is rule of law which may help resolve many of the issues Pak­ista­nis are fac­ing. He argued like this: a law is enact­ed by the vote of major­i­ty, and not by all of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ nod; hence, it must not be called law, because there are cer­tain rep­re­sen­ta­tives who did not vote for it, and cer­tain peo­ple also who do not accept it; and that strips rule of law of the mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance we attach to it. We tried to explain that the objec­tion is valid and that the rep­re­sen­ta­tives and peo­ple who do not accept such a law, they are free to lob­by and cam­paign against it, and that by gain­ing major­i­ty, they may repeal that law and pro­pose anoth­er of their choice and a bet­ter one.

His adaman­cy was so hard­ened that he snubbed us and told us not to talk of rule of law any­more. I tried to explain to him it is this talk for which we gath­er here; despite our dif­fer­ences we should be open to dia­logue; but to no avail. He judged upon us like a tyrant. We made a deci­sion to the effect that it’s use­less to gath­er here if we are not open to talk out our dif­fer­ences. After that when­ev­er we were togeth­er, it was minus him.

Now when I think of him, he appears to me like a mir­ror in which cyn­ic images of Imran Khan (Pak­istan Tehreek-e-Insaf), and Najam Sethi, Ayaz Amir, Ayesha Sid­diqa reflect with vary­ing degrees of clar­i­ty. He had con­tained in him most of the traits Pak­istani polit­i­cal cyn­ics most of the times exhib­it.

Pak­istani cyn­ics believe that what­ev­er neg­a­tiv­i­ty and what­ev­er fault­i­ness exists, respon­si­bil­i­ty for that rests with all the oth­er Pak­ista­nis, and they them­selves are nev­er ever to be blamed a bit for that.

For an expo­si­tion of Pak­istani cyn­i­cism, see my arti­cle: Cyn­i­cism in Pak­istan, where I tried to show that cyn­ics gen­er­al­ly exhib­it two char­ac­ter­is­tics: first, they are neg­a­tive; and sec­ond, they are fault­find­ing. In addi­tion, some of the spe­cif­ic traits of Pak­istani cyn­ics were also iden­ti­fied. First, Pak­istani cyn­ics believe they are not neg­a­tive and not faulty all the times. In con­trast to that, every thing is neg­a­tive and faulty all the times. Sec­ond, Pak­istani cyn­ics believe that what­ev­er neg­a­tiv­i­ty and what­ev­er fault­i­ness exists, respon­si­bil­i­ty for that rests with all the oth­er Pak­ista­nis, and they them­selves are nev­er ever to be blamed a bit for that. Third, Pak­istani cyn­ics believe only they have an exclu­sive claim to the pos­ses­sion of the truth. Also, it’s quite pos­si­ble that a cyn­ic may be a per­fect arro­gant; how­ev­er, it may not be iden­ti­fied as anoth­er attribute char­ac­ter­iz­ing Pak­istani cyn­i­cism. Actu­al­ly, cyn­ics are inher­ent­ly arro­gant.

Let it be clar­i­fied here that be it Imran Khan, or Najam Sethi, or Ayaz Amir, or Ayesha Sid­diqa, in their polit­i­cal opin­ion, they are cyn­ic, i.e. neg­a­tive and fault­find­ing. Like­wise, they appear to believe that they are not neg­a­tive and fault­find­ing, where­as all or most of the things are neg­a­tive and faulty. To them, in fact, it is oth­ers who are neg­a­tive and fault­find­ing. Also, all the times or most of the times, they believe that only they pos­sess the truth exclu­sive­ly. That makes them inher­ent­ly arro­gant, whether they show it or not.

Nat­u­ral­ly no one of the above per­son­al­i­ties is a per­fect cyn­ic. They only exhib­it this or that trait and that too in vary­ing degrees. For instance, Najam Sethi’s analy­sis presents a post-mortem like demon­stra­tion of the issue under con­sid­er­a­tion, how­ev­er, in spite of list­ing an array of opin­ions, he com­mits to none as if he is beyond all that and sit­ting very high in a judg­ing posi­tion. As for Ayesha Sid­diqa, she appears to be sole­ly obsessed with the so-called all-pow­er­ful insti­tu­tion of the Pak­istan Army. For her, noth­ing exists beyond that, which may allow some­thing to hap­pen in Pak­istan with­out the involve­ment of Pak Army; hence her neg­a­tiv­i­ty. So far as Ayaz Amir’s cyn­i­cism is con­cerned, he would find fault with every­thing, you just name it. You ask him for some­thing which is fault­less, and he would find fault with you.

Note: This arti­cle was com­plet­ed in July 2014.
(How the polit­i­cal cyn­i­cism has dis­tort­ed the polit­i­cal evo­lu­tion of Pak­istan would be the top­ic of anoth­er piece!)

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